“You need some help?”

“No,” the boy said. “This is for me to do and only me. Why don’t you just keep watching for Candy and Mama? And please . . . don’t watch me while I’m doing the wielding.”

“Are you going to do some magic?”

“I’m going to try. Just a verse and a chorus.”

“What?”

“They’re songs. Mama wrote down all the spells she learned or created as songs. They’re harder to steal that way, she says. I’ve been listening to Mama’s songs as recordings since I was about two. So I know all her magic because I could sing all her songs, every single one.”

“Did you understand them?”

“We’re about to find out, aren’t we? That’s why I don’t want anyone watching. If something goes wrong, at least you’ll have your back to it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing too ambitious. I’m a horrible singer. But I’d like to ease Jollo’s pain if I can.”

“Isn’t your mother going to go crazy when she finds out you’ve been stealing her magic?”

“Probably. But she’ll go even crazier if she gets back and finds Jollo’s dead. It’ll break her heart. And what kind of son will I be if I don’t try to stop my own mother’s heart from being broken? I’ll tell you. A bad one. I’ve disappointed her enough. This once I’m going to get it right.”

“Couldn’t you just wait a few more minutes?”

“Don’t ask me. Ask Jollo.”

Malingo glanced back at Jollo, and had his answer. If it hadn’t been for the very subtle rise and fall of Jollo’s chest, Malingo might easily have assumed the life had already left Jollo’s body.

“I have to start,” Covenantis said. “You keep looking for Mama or the Quackenbush girl.”

“They’ll come,” Malingo said, and turning his back to Covenantis he did as the boy had requested and stared off between the trees.

As he studied the corridor of shadow before him and ever-deeper shadow ahead of him he became aware that he, the studier, was himself being studied. He let his gaze follow his instinct up into the

lower branches of a tree close by. There sat three members of the pale-feathered flock that had made such noisy passage between the trees only a couple of minutes before. They were silent now, hushed perhaps by the melancholy scene below. He watched them watching him, unnerved by their scrutiny.

And then, from behind, came the sound of Covenantis’s voice, singing with unnerving accuracy, in a falsetto, a song his mother had obviously written to sing herself. It had the lilting rhythm of a lullaby. These were the primal sounds of an Abarat that was holding the Hours in trust for humankind to one day possess. Sounds that were about light and darkness, sky and sea, rock and fire.

“Kai tu penthni,

Kai tu ky,

Hastegethchem

Smannй fy.”

And death. That was the subject waiting behind all the other immensities. Death the merciless, death the irrevocable, the enemy of all things tender and easily broken: cracked like an egg dropped from a high place; burned black when lightning turned the forest to fire; killed by the cold, huddled in the cleft of a rock.

And still the ancient words came, flowing so fearlessly the boy might have been reciting his own name.

“U Tozzemanos,

Wo th’chem

Wo Kai numma

Jeth yo yem.”

What was he doing? Malingo’s curiosity grew more insistent the longer the recitations went on. What kind of comfort could he possibly be offering his brother that required the uttering of words so ancient and alien?

Malingo was in the process of instructing himself not to turn, not to look, when his body acted upon a demand far deeper than his instruction.

He turned and looked. Again his body overtook his mind, this time to simply expel a word—

“No!”

—not once but over and over and over—

“No! No! No! No!”

k

Candy didn’t waste time wondering why Malingo was shouting. She simply seized the moment, and with it, the snake. Boa’s foot was still on the animal’s head, but neither her full attention nor her weight were with it, so when Candy pulled on her invented beast it slid out from under the Princess’s foot without a struggle.

The serpent gave out a most unserpentine din of mutinous rage, writhing fiercely. She tried to grab its twisting coils with her free hand, but she was concentrating so hard on doing so that all thought of Boa and her lethal designs went out of her head. She half turned carelessly, and realized too late that her eyes had grazed the shape of Boa, moving toward her. Worse, they would not now let go. She tried to detach her sight from the form of the Princess—and worse, from the sight of the designs, moving up and over her face, forming their nauseating symbols in the air around her head. Signs to make a body recoil against itself: to make it turn itself inside out in a frenzy of disorder, to work against nature, against purpose, against life, and destroy itself.

So much destructive power was encoded in the patterns playing on Boa’s face. Even though Candy knew the harm they would make her do to herself, their enchantment had more power than her will. She couldn’t force it from her, even when she felt her stomach turning over—

“Don’t! Look!” Laguna Munn shrieked.

She didn’t have a gentle voice, a voice of calm or contemplation. No, her voice was rude and raw, which was just what the moment needed.

Much to Candy’s relief and astonishment, her eyes had obeyed the instruction. As soon as she looked away, her will was her own again.

“Good!” Mrs. Munn said. “Now quickly, girl! Give that damnable beast to me.”

Candy began to offer it, but Mrs. Munn was impatient.

“Give the beast to me!” she said. She appeared from within the trees and reached out to take hold of the animal. “Next time, call up an ax!” she said as she dragged the creature out of Candy’s arms. “Snakes are all teeth and talk!”

“I’ll make you regret—” the snake began to say, but Mrs. Munn was in no mood for its threats.

She wrenched its tail off Candy’s arm, and all but bundled the creature into a ball of black-and-yellow coils.

Then she told it: “Go bite a Boa!” and threw it at the Princess.

Grabbing hold of Candy’s sleeve, Mrs. Munn dragged her off between the trees, leaving Princess Boa and the conjured serpent to take out their lethal rage upon each other.

Chapter 19

The Price of Freedom

“A WALL OF BLUE FLAME Thorns is going around those two,” Mrs. Munn said as she hurried Candy away from the spot where they’d left Boa and the snake to match their venomous skills. The incantatrix was no longer the figure of calm power and confident abundance she’d been when Candy had first met her. The colors in her dress had been somehow removed, and one of her feather antennae had been torn out. Everywhere there was evidence of how hard the last few minutes had been. She was scratched, bruised, and sweating: an exhausted fighter still standing, but only by sheer force of will.

“When will the wall go up?” Candy asked her.

“It’s already up. No, girl, don’t look back! Lordy Lou, when are you going to learn some caution? You’re not playing games. The Boa girl may have been a civilized tenant when she was sharing your head, but that simply testifies to the power of your influence. You must have kept her villainy subdued, without knowing you were doing it. But she’s loose now.”

“What about the wall of Flame Thorns?”

“Oh, that’s not going to detain her for very long. Nor is that ridiculous snake of yours.”

“You were right. I should have made an ax—”

“It would have been no more use than . . . the . . . snake.” As Mrs. Munn’s words slowed down so did her pace until she was standing still, Candy beside her, staring off into the trees. Candy looked for some sign of Malingo, or of Jollo and Covenantis, but the shadows between the trees seemed particularly dense directly ahead of them: almost clotted.